Musical Interlude: Listened to some Kurt Weill today, and remembered this track from his wife, Lotte Lenya, a song I find immensely lovely and comforting all at once.
"Speak Low," performed by Lotte Lenya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jULhrwOmGOY
#MusicalInterlude #Jazz #KurtWeill #LotteLenya #OneTouchOfVenus #LoveSong
Ted Tocks Covers
Happy Independence Day!
The Top Ten Ted Tocks featuring American artists and a couple of bonus songs. Enjoy some quality music from #warrenzevon #johnprine #bobbiegentry #Queensryche #leadbelly #ramjam #JerryJeffWalker #tinytim #LotteLenya and #bobbydarin plus a whole lot more.
Have a grateful day!
Musical Interlude: Ever feel indecisive? Can't settle on something? Kurt Weill understood, and wrote a great justification for it. Here it is, by the great diva herself.
"The Saga of Jenny," performed by Lotte Lenya.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4oU7THKC5E
#MusicalInterlude #LotteLenya #KurtWeill #IraGershwin #LadyInTheDark #Broadway
Today In Labor History April 3, 1950: Composer Kurt Weill died. Weill’s most famous song was Mack the Knife ("Die Moritat von Mackie Messer"), which became a schlock classic after Bobby Darin’s rendition. However, Weill wrote the song as part of Bertolt Brecht’s “Three Penny Opera,” which was a socialist critique of the capitalist world. Weill was persecuted by the Nazis for his political views and his Jewish heritage. He fled to America, with his wife, singer Lotte Lenya. Some of Weill’s other well-known songs include: Alabama Song (covered by the Doors), Pirate Jenny (covered by Nina Simone), Mack the Knife (also covered by Louis Armstrong), Der Kleine des Lieben Gottes (covered by John Zorn).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6orDcL0zt34
#workingClass #LaborHistory #nazis #antisemitism #holocaust #KurtWeill #LotteLenya #BertoltBrecht #socialism #communism #NinaSimone #LouisArmstrong
Kurt Weill, dancer on the tightrope between art and kitsch
On Wednesday 19 February, the Flemish ensembles Collegium Vocale Gent and Het Collectief present the programme In Exile at Muziekgebouw aan ‘t IJ Amsterdam. They will perform music by eight composers who fled the Nazis to America in the 1930s. From Arnold Schoenberg to Hanns Eisler and from Bartók tot Kurt Weill – who passed away 75 years ago. In 2000 I wrote a portrait of Weill for a Dutch broadcasting magazine.
Amsterdam, January 2000
What do Kurt Weill and Johann Sebastian Bach have in common? They are the only two composers whose years of birth and death yours truly can recite without blinking an eye: ‘Bach, 1685-1750; Weill, 1900-1950’. Both composers are extensively commemorated in the jubilee year 2000.
Bach died 250 years ago. In the case of Weill, the commemoration knife cuts both ways: not only did he die 50 years ago, he was born 100 years ago. Still, the ripples that Weill’s appearance and demise draw will be considerably smaller than Bach’s: you won’t see Weill’s complete oeuvre offered at a discount price any time soon.
Footnote
While for many, Bach ranks as the greatest composer of all time, Weill has always remained a somewhat controversial figure. Although his name is mentioned in most music history books, this happens somewhat reluctantly. He acts as a footnote, as it were, to names like Hindemith, Stravinsky and Schoenberg. Yet Weill developed a compositional style all his own, which is immediately recognisable.
This did not come out of the blue, however, for like his colleagues, Weill was a child of his time. The First World War had dealt a blow to the belief in progress and the innate goodness of man. Artists sought new means of expression to articulate and depict their experienced horror.
People set themselves against romanticism, which had framed the world with a golden edge. Everyday life took centre stage, the harsh reality of the common man. Even more than in the previous century, people sought an outlet for their feelings. Thus the tormented figures in Edvard Munch’s paintings set the tone for the expressionist music of Arnold Schoenberg.
Wry oom-pah music
But unlike Schoenberg, who reasoned, regulated and translated his feelings into the intellectualist twelve-tone system, Weill sought his inspiration in dance music, jazz, oom-pah bands and cabaret. In complete contrast to Schoenberg, he increasingly emphasised triads. In doing so, he skilfully balanced on the tightrope between art and kitsch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGUjGPrfA6U&ab_channel=HansFriedrichGunther
However, Weill’s oom-pa always has a bitter ring, the dance music is drenched in unadulterated despair and his rhythms stumble. His music is about the seamy side of life, about sex and drugs, poop and pee, in a one-to-one relationship, just like rock music. He captured this in unforgettable melodies, which understandably still hold great appeal for rock musicians.
Rough sound
Like Stravinsky, Weill turned away from the swooning string chords of the 19th century and used the much rawer brass instruments. If he used violins at all, it was percussive and without vibrato. When he used grand gestures from established operatic practice, these always had an ironic twist. Also, like his contemporaries, Weill rarely wrote for large orchestra. This preference for small ensembles stemmed partly from lack of money and partly from the need for new sounds. In addition to brass instruments and percussion, Weill also employed mandolins and guitars.
Although composers like Hindemith and the members of the French Groupe des Six also found inspiration in popular music, their work never has the rawness and directness of Weill’s pieces. Only Hanns Eisler and Paul Dessau come close with their aesthetics. And they too fall between the classical shore and the popular ship: too vulgar for the classical music world, too posh for the popular.
Cynical Zeitgeist
Yet there was a market for this kind of music in Germany in the 1920s: the famous 1928 Dreigroschenoper became a real blockbuster. Together with Bertold Brecht, who wrote the lyrics, Weill managed to strike just the right chord to engage the dejected German people, disheartened by the loss of face after World War I. Their cynical drama fitted the Zeitgeist, which Hitler, unfortunately, also understood perfectly.
The latter successfully cast himself as the saviour of the disillusioned Volk. When Brecht and (the Jewish) Weill staged their opera Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny in 1929, Hitler’s brown shirts were already pretty much in control. They disrupted the premiere in Leipzig with shouting and anti-Jewish pamphlets, and only thanks to a cordon of policemen could the performances take place at all.
In 1933, Weill and his wife Lotte Lenya fled to Paris and then to America. They were welcomed with open arms, but musically this proved to be a dead end. None of the many pieces he composed in America, such as Lost in the Stars, One Touch of Venus, or Knickerbocker Holiday, can even match what he wrote in Europe. In the land of unlimited possibilities, his music definitely tilted towards kitsch. Soaked in a sentimental Hollywood sauce, it lost its sourness and with it its essence.
Brecht and Weill: incompatible moods
This certainly has to do with the fact that Weill no longer collaborated with Brecht. Both created their strongest pieces in collaboration with each other, even though they did not actually fit together at all. Weill was an extremely gentle man, who lived only for music – he even accepted that his wife Lotte shared her bed with other men and women.
Brecht, on the other hand, was a despot, who saw himself as the centre of the world. He considered music to be totally subordinate to his texts and regularly accused Weill of drawing too much attention to his notes. While it was Weill’s thoughtful settings that made his words immortal. But perhaps it is precisely this incompatibility of moods that enabled them to create such gripping theatre.
Back to my question from the beginning. Listen to the fugal overture of Die Dreigroschenoper, or the many recitatives and chorales in Ozeanflug, and you will find that Weill has more in common with Bach than his easily remembered birth and death years.
#ArnoldSchönberg #BertoltBrecht #HannsEisler #KurtWeill #LotteLenya
It's a Lotte Lenya sort of night.
When I looked back at James Bond's first Cold War movie
#JamesBond #Bond #Bondathon #FromRussiaWithLove #SeanConnery #LotteLenya #PedroArmendáriz #RobertShaw #DanielaBianchi #TerenceYoung #IanFleming #spythriller #ColdWar #film
https://popculturemaniacs.com/bondathon-from-russia-with-love/
Via Neville F Chamberlain @NevilleFChambe1
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7h
#LotteLenya #BOTD in 1898, photographed here with Daniela Bianchi, Ian Fleming, Lois Maxwell and Sean Connery at a publicity event for the #JamesBond film “FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE” (1963)
Ted Tocks Covers
Mack the Knife
Originally posted on October 14, 2019
On this day 65 years ago ‘Mack the Knife’ by Bobby Darin was at #1. This classic was a cover of an old show tune from ‘The ThreePenny Opera’, originally recorded by Lotte Kenya.
“Now on the sidewalk, ooh, sunny morning, uh-huh
Lies a body just oozin' life
Eek, and someone's sneakin' 'round the corner
Could that someone be Mack the Knife?”
Today’s feature song is familiar to many. The best part is it has been covered by artists numbering into the hundreds and it has a history that sees it entering its tenth decade of popularity. The …
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